Design Your Life: Former Ikea Executive Shares Her Tools for Personal Success

Don't spend your whole life searching for the right job; make it the most important job to design the right life.

Pernille Spiers-Lopez left Denmark for the United States as a young, naïve entrepreneur. Years later, she became CEO of IKEA North America and then Global HR manager for 130,000 employees. But she soon learned—staring at the roof of the ambulance that was rushing her to the ER—that the job had a price.

So this is success. I am away from my family, my children, and my life. This ...